Operation Valkyrie

davidr151

Banned
If the July 20th Plot to kill Hitler had succeeded and the conspirators led by Von Stauffenburg had succeeded in forming a new government, could they have successfully made peace with the Allies?
 
No. The Allies demanded an unconditional surrender. Von Stauffenberg and his nationalist friends weren't willing to give them that. They wanted to keep fighting in the East and even demanded things of the West in exchange for peace. He'll be laughed out of the room. Fortunately, killing Hitler will create instability and cause a power struggle against Nazi hardliners, which will likely cause Germany to fall quicker than in OTL.
 
No, even if the Valkyrie plotters had succeeded (which probably wouldn't be that difficult), they were never going to get a separate peace agreement from the WAllies. Given that the July 20th plotters were, at best, far-right militarists and not the champions of democracy they're popularly perceived as, this isn't surprising. Best case scenario for them is to engineer a de-facto cease-fire in the West by pulling all but the most token of military assets from the west and throwing them East, and giving the WAllies a straight shot to Berlin.

Of course, them throwing themselves on their sword in order to get the best possible peace deal could just as easily backfire, with some kind of Dolchstoßlegende 2: Electric Boogaloo.
 
Another Stab in the back myth for 30 years before WW3?

WW3? Are you serious? Germany is going to be occupied and basically for all intents and purposes re-educated to whatever the WAllies and Soviets want. That means the next generation of Germans were guaranteed to be hard core pacifists as happened.

The war time generation of Germans will hate the July Plotters as they did OTL even after the war, but in the end of the day they aren't stupid they know what being conquered means.

Germany wasn't conquered in WW1, it was defeated outside the country then handed the terms of a conquered nation one that the so called conquerors couldn't enforce.

This time there is no problem with lack of will to enforce whatever the Allies want to do with Germany.
 
WW3? Are you serious? Germany is going to be occupied and basically for all intents and purposes re-educated to whatever the WAllies and Soviets want. That means the next generation of Germans were guaranteed to be hard core pacifists as happened.

The war time generation of Germans will hate the July Plotters as they did OTL even after the war, but in the end of the day they aren't stupid they know what being conquered means.

Germany wasn't conquered in WW1, it was defeated outside the country then handed the terms of a conquered nation one that the so called conquerors couldn't enforce.

This time there is no problem with lack of will to enforce whatever the Allies want to do with Germany.

I think it's not completely outside the realm of possibility for a second Dolchstoßlegende to take root, depending on how successful the coup is. If it triggers a full blown civil war between the Wehrmacht and the SS, or a collapse in the west in an attempt to get some or all of Germany under WAllied control, you might see some lingering resentment for the military commanders who robbed the German people from victory (or whatever).
 
After a succesful Valkyrie coup, the new Germans rulers will quickly understand that war is basically lost. Yet, for the German ruling class, there is still a difference between

a) being completly occupied by the Soviet Union and loosing their economic and political power or
b) being supervised by the WAllies for some years, including the trial of some Nazi "demagogues", while most of the responsible person remain in charge.

So, they will try to prolong the war in the east, and maybe also to destroy the evidence for their participation in the Holocaust, and hope for an armistice with Britain and the USA.

Finally, I don't doubt about the willingness of 2/3 of the British and American rulers, mainly Churchill, to stop the Soviet quickly, preferably even before Poland.
 
Every time this comes up, I always say the same thing; the July 20th Movement wanted peace with whomever would give it to them first. They were ready to make peace with the side that would agree to their terms first, regardless of whether it was the Soviets or the Western Allies. Peter Hoffman talks about this in his extensive work on the German Resistance.

Now, the movement had dome very unrealistic ideas about what sort of peace they could achieve (their proposed Minister of Foreign Affairs in the case the Soviets made peace first believed they could negotiate a second Brest-Litovsk), but they really did want peace.

I've done a fair bit of reading on this subject, and I've never seen any evidence that the movement wanted to continue war with the Soviets. Is this just "common knowledge," or can somebody actually point me to a source that proves this? I'm not perfect on my knowledge of the resistance (I focused more on Austrian history), but this claim justvdiesnt match up with what I've read, and I'm afraid I might be missing something.
 
I've done a fair bit of reading on this subject, and I've never seen any evidence that the movement wanted to continue war with the Soviets. Is this just "common knowledge," or can somebody actually point me to a source that proves this? I'm not perfect on my knowledge of the resistance (I focused more on Austrian history), but this claim justvdiesnt match up with what I've read, and I'm afraid I might be missing something.

The whole resistance movement consisted of aristocrats, mainly Prussian ones, who had supported Hitler in his fight against communism (and also against the Jews) until they realized they are going to loose. They believed in some form of monarchy and an Estates parliament. Now, they would have made peace with the Union if Stalin had made an acceptable offer (and the WAllies don't make a better one), but I think they personally hoped to continue the war in the east.
 
Every time this comes up, I always say the same thing; the July 20th Movement wanted peace with whomever would give it to them first. They were ready to make peace with the side that would agree to their terms first, regardless of whether it was the Soviets or the Western Allies. Peter Hoffman talks about this in his extensive work on the German Resistance.

Now, the movement had dome very unrealistic ideas about what sort of peace they could achieve (their proposed Minister of Foreign Affairs in the case the Soviets made peace first believed they could negotiate a second Brest-Litovsk), but they really did want peace.

I've done a fair bit of reading on this subject, and I've never seen any evidence that the movement wanted to continue war with the Soviets. Is this just "common knowledge," or can somebody actually point me to a source that proves this? I'm not perfect on my knowledge of the resistance (I focused more on Austrian history), but this claim justvdiesnt match up with what I've read, and I'm afraid I might be missing something.

Their claims were ludicrous. As long as they were committed to German territorial expansion east, they could never have peace with the USSR.
 
Every time this comes up, I always say the same thing; the July 20th Movement wanted peace with whomever would give it to them first. They were ready to make peace with the side that would agree to their terms first, regardless of whether it was the Soviets or the Western Allies. Peter Hoffman talks about this in his extensive work on the German Resistance.

Now, the movement had dome very unrealistic ideas about what sort of peace they could achieve (their proposed Minister of Foreign Affairs in the case the Soviets made peace first believed they could negotiate a second Brest-Litovsk), but they really did want peace.

I've done a fair bit of reading on this subject, and I've never seen any evidence that the movement wanted to continue war with the Soviets. Is this just "common knowledge," or can somebody actually point me to a source that proves this? I'm not perfect on my knowledge of the resistance (I focused more on Austrian history), but this claim justvdiesnt match up with what I've read, and I'm afraid I might be missing something.

From what I've read (can't track it down off the top of my head, apologies), some senior members of the plotters (including Stauffenberg) were in favor of negotiating some kind of separate peace with the WAllies, which would allow them to, if not win the war against the Soviets, at least fight them to a draw that prevented occupation.

I do agree that they were looking for peace from whoever would offer it first, but their ideas of what that peace would look like were at best optimistic, at worst delusional. The question is would they, after their ambassadors were laughed out of the Allied HQ's, accepted a peace along the lines of OTL (occupation, dissolution of the government, war crimes trials, the works), or tried to pull off some kind of trick where they engineer a collapse in the West in order to prevent the Soviets from entering Germany proper.

While some of the more hardline anti-Communist members of the WAllied governments might look favorably on the plotters, the cooler/saner heads would almost certainly realize that cutting a deal with the plotters would, especially with the ten million man Soviet juggernaut bearing down on Western Europe, be a very bad idea.

Of course, this all supposes they're able to eliminate Hitler and the SS without triggering some kind of civil war, which is a mighty big "if".
 
Not a chance in hell. However I bet once they realize that they do whatever it takes to make sure it's the WALLIES that overrun Germany. Most likely by shifting almost everything to the east and telling whatevers left in the west to "shoot once then surrender".
 

davidr151

Banned
Interesting responses...I am under the impression that Von Stauffenburg wanted to make peace with whoever would accept first whether it was the Soviets or the western Allies...I have heard that he wanted to make peace with the western Allies to fight the Soviets but realistically the July 20th plotters probably realized Hitler had repeated the mistake of Napoleon invading the USSR and would have tried to make peace with Stalin...fear of the July 20th plotters making leave with the western Allies first or even allying with them against the Soviet Union may be the only thing that would cause him to accept peace with Germany although I imagine Germany would at the very least withdraw from the 1941 borders of the USSR and possibly cede them the Balkans or something in compensation for the war...of course this is conditional upon the new German government convincing the Allies it's non-Nazi enough that it had a serious chance of dividing the Soviets and Anglo-Americans and playing them off against one another in the negotiation process...

Has this topic been extensively discussed on this forum just out of curiosity?
 
I think the best result they'd get would be Germany is still occupied by the Allies and the Soviets, but the devastation that occurred throughout later 1944 and 1945 doesn't occur so German infrastructure is completely wiped out
 
After the new German government pulls out of France, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Italy, the WAllies invade Germany. The head start lets the WAllies liberate Warsaw and Prague. Which means after the war Poland is a divided country, with Free West Poland and Communist East Poland. Until they vote to reunite in 1990. In late 1945, here is a not so velvet divorce in Czechoslovakia. Since I assume that there is still an occupation zone agreement, there is still East Germany. The front line NATO nations will be West Germany and the Czech Republic. They will both host large US military bases. So if you are the child of a German and an American Service Person. Your American parent might have been stationed in the Czech Republic, So you may have a different heritage. I see VE Day on November 14, 1944. The USSR declares war on Japan and invades Manchukuo on February 14, 1945. The WAllies European vets arrive in the Pacific Theater March 1945. The invasion of Okinawa goes faster. The bombing is more intensive and the blockade more effective. Hirohito surrenders on August 3, 1945. The atomic bomb is a military secret until the Soviets announce they have developed their own in 1949. The USSR occupies much of China. They expel Jiang's government in 1946. There are no bumper stickers in the US that say who lost China. The PRC is a Soviet satellite. Moscow vetoes the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. The encourage Deng because he can make China less dependent on Soviet aid. The Chines economy develops like OTL in the 1980s There is no playing the China card. US China relations open up under Reagan after corporations eager to cash in on the lucrative China trade lobby him.
 
I think the best result they'd get would be Germany is still occupied by the Allies and the Soviets, but the devastation that occurred throughout later 1944 and 1945 doesn't occur so German infrastructure is completely wiped out

People are forgetting this would effectively save over ten million lives ending the war in 1944 along with ending the worst months of the Final Solution quite early and saving millions of lives there as well.
 
Not a chance in hell. However I bet once they realize that they do whatever it takes to make sure it's the WALLIES that overrun Germany. Most likely by shifting almost everything to the east and telling whatevers left in the west to "shoot once then surrender".

I'd go with this: start by shifting as many SS units that haven't been interned to the eastern front, next come the HIVIs. As soon as they know it's win or die they'll either shoot themselves or fight hard. At this point effectively leaving a rear guard in the west, the 20 Juli plotters would be betting on the W/Allies getting to Berlin and driving on Poland before the Russians get there and simultaneously getting rid of inconvenient NAZIS via the Eastern front.
 
Without the soviet threat on the other side of Germany, allied motivation to grant autonomy to the Germans wouldn't be as high as OTL.

France annexes the Saar? Or even the Rheinland too?
 
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